Project on electricity, gas, hydrogen and CO2 transport infrastructures

The project improved the electricity grid extension in TIMES to support DC Power Flow Modelling with both PTDF and voltage-angle formulations. At the same time, it endogenously supports Transmission Expansion Planning without being limited to fixed topology, as it captures the changes that need to be made in the PTDF coefficients. In addition, the project implemented a new extension for the representation of grids of gaseous fuels (natural gas, biogas, biomethane, hydrogen, syngas, CO2, etc.) by modelling the steady-state behavior of the gas flow in the pipeline that is governed by the Weymouth equation. The improved electricity grid extension and the new extension on gas grids are expected to be useful to modelers assessing potential bottlenecks in the electricity transmission system,  evaluating impacts of integrating large amounts of variable renewable generation or interested in representing gas, hydrogen, or CO₂ emissions pipeline networks by accounting for the physical properties of the gas flows and linepack within those pipelines.

Outputs of the project include:

• TIMES-Grid-Features-Report.pdf: full project report documenting the design and methodology.
• TIMES-Grid-Features.pdf: User Note with instructions for using the extension in the VEDA environment, also on GitHub.
• GRID_DEMO_Models.zip: demo models in VEDA illustrating the extensions, with a short usage note.